@origami-penguin / origami-penguin.tumblr.com
this encounter seems very intimate and magical, like a moment in a dream
This is the best thing I’ve ever seen. The end of it omfg
It should also be noted that in the original post of this that I saw on FB, it’s remarked upon that the cat is stealing this stuffed tiger from the neighbor’s house. This is not his stuffed animal. He has stolen it multiple times apparently.
So, I kinda wanted to hop in and subject this tumblr post to Peer Review, because while I definitely agree that there is a big problem in the US regarding poor media literacy, the study featured here is... not a good measurement, and these bullet points make the results seem worse than they are.
Another person in the notes linked an additional article that contained the full study, and these are the questions that were included in the study:
A couple of problems right off the bat. The first one that jumps out is #6: "The Earth is between 5,000 and 10,000 years old." In this study, the correct answer would be that this is a statement of fact, because it is, well, stated as a fact. And according to the paper in question:
That's lovely and all, but nowhere in this study does it say that the participants were informed that this is definition of "statement of fact" that the study was using. It's not exactly common knowledge that "statement of fact" and "fact" do not actually mean the same thing. A statement of fact is when someone says something that they believe is true. A fact is something that is true.
So, anyone who participated in this study who interpreted "statement of fact" to mean "fact" (and also wasn't a young-Earth conspiracy theorist) would have gotten this question wrong, because they know that Earth is much older than 10,000 years.
Another somewhat less obvious problem is in question 2, which the authors of the study address as such:
Yes, I agree that nobody could reasonably argue that a 95% loss isn't significant. However, unless the study specifically recruited participants who were extremely knowledgable about statistics relating to ISIS activity, the participants have no way of knowing that 95% is the amount in question. That "significant portion" could be anything!
Like, let's say that ISIS had lost 25% of its territory. That's a lot! That's over 10,000 square kilometers that were no longer under ISIS control. So one could argue that this is a significant portion. But also, that's only a fraction of their territory. ISIS still has control over the majority of the territory they'd had previously - three times as much as the amount they'd lost. So one could also argue that this is an insignifant portion.
If I had been a participant in this study, I would have marked this as a statement of opinion. And thus I would have become part of the 95% who apparently can't differentiate between fact and opinion.
But, I was not a study participant. So, who was? What does this study say about its participants?
Well, here's what the study says about it:
That's it. No information about how participants were recruited or invited to take the survey. Nothing about what quality assurance methods were used to make sure that participants were following instructions, or that computer error didn't interfere with the data.
Nothing about incentives given for the completion of the survey.
Oh, yes, that's something very important to note. You see, YouGov is not an academic research firm. It's a marketing research firm. It functions similarly to sites like Swagbucks or Survey Junkies. And this is how it markets itself to participants when you search for YouGov in Google:
That's exact marketing used by Swagbucks. I use Swagbucks. I'm a pretty active user, in fact. I answer surveys and play mobile games to collect points, then redeem them, usually for Wal-Mart gift cards so I can save on groceries. I know how sites like these work.
And I also know that when I just want to get a survey completed, I bullshit. I just click whichever multiple choice option is closest to my cursor until I'm done and can get the points.
Guess what else I do: I lie. Sometimes a survey is listed on the site that's worth a lot of points but is only looking for people of a certain demographic. And I take it anyway. I give them whatever info is needed to get my points and get those gift cards. I have had a grand total of one cup of coffee in my life and hated it. But whenever a survey asks me if I have ever bought a certain brand of coffee, I say yes, and I review it.
Oh yeah, that's another point: there is no demographic information given about this study's participants. We know that participants were at least asked for their age and political affiliation ("Multivariate models include controls for age and partisanship") but we, the readers, are never told what that spread turned out to be. We just have to take their word for it that YouGov's sampling methodology was sound.
If I had turned in this research paper for review, with this Methods section and this survey, my advisor would have slapped me.
So, what is my point? Why did I spend an hour writing this response to a tumblr post? Well, because the findings of this study may be bullshit, but this whole post brings to light another big problem in the world of media and journalism.
The University of Illinois published this sloppy-ass study that I would have been embarassed to hand in as a 10-point assignment. This survey made it through the internal review board, a process that I know from experience can take months and dozens of rounds of review. It was then peer reviewed by Harvard, the school that people point to as the epitome of academic prestige full of super geniuses, and added to their library. Then it was picked up by a Washington DC online newspaper and tweeted about by a member of the House of Representatives.
And finally, it was posted here on Tumblr, uncritically.
I don't know what percentage of Americans can't tell fact from opinion. And reading this study is not going to give me an accurate answer, because the study's design and conclusions the authors reached are a mess.
All I can tell you is that academic and journalistic instutions alike need to do a better job of reviewing and thinking critically about information they receive before they publish it to the world.
There’s something too on the nose about this… very often, if you’re presented with something that makes the vast majority of people seem incredibly, shockingly ignorant and stupid, there’s more going on with the “study”.
I don’t get it
oh I get it
The common baron caterpillar (Euthalia aconthea) is a next level master of camouflage. Its green body is covered in a mesh of feathery bristles and a yellow line down it’s back, that blend perfectly with the color and texture of mango leaves, its primary food source.
I thinks folks expressing incredulity at the quality of the writing and composition in Calvin and Hobbes are often missing the context that Bill Watterson is arguably the most influential sequential artist of his generation. Like, this is a guy who once told the editors of nationally syndicated newspapers to go fuck themselves when they wanted to mess with his panel layouts, and not only did he keep his job, he got his way. He could have had literally any gig he wanted, and he chose to be the Sunday funnies guy because that's what made him happy. He's basically the Weird Al of sequential art.
Watterson considers comics to be as true an art form as painting and films and literature, capable of reaching just as high as any other medium. Calvin and Hobbes isn't accidentally high art. Watterson made it what it is on purpose. And when he was done, he stopped. No movie, no spinoff, no reboot. He considers the comic to be its completed form, in exactly the medium it is supposed to be. He believed in comics in a way few others ever have, and he fought tooth and nail for the right to take his own work, jokes and all, seriously.
Character sheet of Lan “You Are Not Qualified to Talk To Me” Zhan 🐰
TURN ON THE SOUND. YOU CAN'T MISS THIS. THIS IS FANTASTIC.
she didn’t lose her internship because “her friends” used a hashtag, she lost it because a bunch of 4chan fuckers found out she’s trans and decided to doxx her and harass her employer about the ~image~ she was sending. like this wasn’t her public face account, she wasn’t spouting racist garbage, she mistook someone in her mentions for one of the randos she gets regularly harassed by (because, yknow, if someone tweets “language” at you on twitter, 99.9% of the time they’re not actually concerned for you) and transphobes used the opportunity to fuck up her life. it’s great that hickam is behind her on this but a lot of people are sharing this and laughing at how hilarious it is that “a furry got fired for swearing”, which is the smokescreen being used to cover how this was doxxing a trans woman to ruin her potential career
I love your grandpa and this is gonna do NUMBERS here
This is delightful!
i cant get over the king charles portrait. they made that thing to age in his place. that painting hangs in the house of a too-friendly family you find in the post apocalyptic wasteland who inexplicably has a ready supply of fresh meat. if mario jumped into that painting he wouldn't find a charming platformer he would be flayed and hanged like a medieval criminal by an unseeable force in a droning red void. that painting is a color blindness test for people who work in IT but believe in the divine right of kings. that painting is going to weep the sequel to blood. after he dies charles is gonna crawl outta that thing like sadako.
this painting is what ultrakill speedrunners see when they close their eyes. if you showed this to the romans who flogged jesus theyd think this painting is excessive. this painting is the blood cavern from space funeral. it's the color out of space.
jegus tapdancing christ it is actually that bad
So the artist is Jonathan Yeo. His statement:
"The vivid colour of the glazes in the background echo the uniform’s bright red tunic, not only resonating with the royal heritage found in many historical portraits but also injecting a dynamic, contemporary jolt into the genre with its uniformly powerful hue / providing a modern contrast to more traditional depictions. The butterfly approaching King Charles's shoulder in the portrait adds a layer of narrative depth, symbolising both his known advocacy for environmental causes and his personal transformation. "
Listen. Buddy. I hate to be mean to an artist but when i first saw this I physically recoiled. If this had been done in another style and the background still matched the color of the coat I don't think I would have liked it but... this looks like it was composed of raw meat. Dude. WHY.
(I went and looked up the artist's work, and his style does overall involve a lot of this sort of heavily textured use of color. But none of the others hit me this way. He has one of Idris Elba that's a bust portrait and he isn't wearing any clothes, and the background is the same color as his skin, but like... there's more contrast in the portrait shading so it doesn't feel like Idris Elba disappears into it, and it's just not as upsetting a shade.)
LOOK at this thing. It's even more vivid in person, and it's HUGE.
Actually I'll say that the contrast between Charles's head and the rest seems like it's better in person. But it's still overwhelming and kind of upsetting.
Thank you for the explanation, and the artist's name! I couldn't tell if the bloody overtones were deliberate or not, so I looked up some more of Jonathan Yeo's art for context - and I'm glad I did. He's worked in a lot of mediums, but let's focus on the portraits, because they're fucking great...
I love these. Zoom in; each one is technically masterful but also very empathetic, delicately filling in exactly the minimum details necessary to convey the sitter's character and humanity.
So let's compare the portraits of Idris Elba, Helena Bhonam Carter, and Dennis Hopper:
To the portrait of Sgt Geoffrey Pattinson:
That's not fair.
(If you want to see me vent I'm on tiktok, @cryingbard)
would you?
Don’t mind me, I’m just crying over Sumerian children’s nicknames.
🥺
"Mercy" is not about being docile and infinitely forgiving. Mercy is choosing to withhold cruelty that you could have easily inflicted, or simply allowed to happen. It's a conscious, deliberate choice, an act of power, to show you have freedom over your impulses. And sometimes it's not a favour to the subject as much as it's a favour to yourself, to free yourself by knowing that you gave them a fair chance to do the right thing. If a wasp flies in through the window, I'll catch and release it. If another one flies in, I'll consider it a coincidence and catch and release this one too.
But if I release it outside again and see with my own eyes as it curves around and flies right back inside, for the third time, I will not hesitate. My conscience is clear, because I know that I tried, and I know for sure that this little shit was not killed just for the crime of being small.
